Past life regression

Past life regression is the use of hypnosis to unlock the memories of your past lives.  This practice is rooted in the belief of reincarnation since we would have to have come back at least once in order to have a past life.  It is mostly used in a spiritual or therapeutic way.  It can be used to explain our fears (for instance, fear of fire means your died in a fire in a past life) or our relationships (you may have known the past lives of people around you, like your best friend now could have been your brother in a past life).  It is also available to those that are curious.  The recipient of the past life regression is put into a deep hypnosis then is asked questions that are supposed to give a time and place of the past life and the kind of person they were (past lives can have a different gender and race than the current life).
Past life regression is so widely believed because a lot of the advocates for it are people with fairly legitimate credentials (a lot of them have doctorates) but the "research" into past life regression is no empirically tested or peer reviewed like legitimate scientific matters.  The practicioner uses suggestive questioning while the recipient is under hypnosis in order to get a certain response, much like how entertainment hypnosis is done. Much of the "past life memories" are attributed to cryptomnesia, which when a forgotten memory is remembered but not recognized by the person (for instance, if you are intently listening to a movie or focusing a lot on writing a paper and someone around you says to someone else their idea for a pickle vending machine, later on you may come up with the idea for a pickle vending machine and you will think it was soley your idea and not remember the other person suggesting it).
People believe in this most likely because authoritative sources advocate it, it seems to be a good explanation for our "unexplained fears" (when in relatiy, you are probably afraid of fire because it hurts a lot and you've read reports of people dying in fires), and it gives us a feeling of immortality which is very comforting to most people.
My family is not religious at all and I never went to church, but my mom is a big believer in past life regression.  She would read a lot of the works of Brian M. Weiss and even attempted past life regression on herself.  She believes that her dreams hold secrets to her past lives.  In high school I believed this also since she was my mother and had me read the books also and since the information was coming from people with doctorates it seemed highly believable.  I believed my dreams were insights into my pst lives and I tried to take meaning from them when looking back they were just random dreams.

3 ways to remember past lives
"Scientific proof"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Weiss